The NRA is not an organization that I support but I do know that they accept donations to help support their lobbying. I also know that the NRA has major weight with a lot of political decisions due to their ability to lobby which in turn comes from the donations they receive so they can afford to pay their lobbyists to do what they need them

You can sign up to be a member of the NRA which costs varying amounts depending on how often and how much you want to pay.

The slogan for their website is It’s Not Just About Guns it’s About Freedom. This in itself is a logical appeal as well as an emotional appeal because Americans love freedom we fight for freedom so the NRA uses it to gain support.

When asked to describe who they are and what they do here is the NRA’s response

“The NRA provides firearms training and gun safety programs to all gun owners.The group also says it fights for the Second Amendment of the Constitution, which states: “A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

The NRA uses the second amendment to basically justify everything they stand for, they use law, therefore, their argument is backed in fact (though this fact is up for interpretation) it is something they believe to be fact. However since the interpretation of the second amendment is so hotly debated I feel like this is not the most effective way they can gain support from people who don’t support them.

“The NRA says it uses dues to fight for Second Amendment rights and create training programs for kids, self-defense programs for women and training programs for law enforcement.”

All throughout the NRA emphasizes the fact they provide safety and self-defense programs which are smart because people are more likely to support these things than recreational use of guns these are buzz words which the NRA logically uses to build their argument.

Thesis: In order to make this nation a more safe place there needs to stricter regulation with regard to ownership, sales and permits of guns in America; we need to look at what we’ve tried to do as a country, we need to use what other countries have done as a guide, however, most importantly we need to look at what the people are demanding.

Paragraph 1:-Access to Guns (NRA)

American culture is built on the foundations of the bill or rights and the constitution. These principles are ingrained in us from the very beginning and with that comes this culture that we have created where your right to own a gun out weights my rights to live.

Bottom line it’s not that difficult to buy a gun in America. There aren’t many rules and regulations stopping a citizen from going out and purchasing a gun. There aren’t extensive background checks to see what type of person you are. There aren’t any safety classes one must take in order to prove they know how to properly handle a gun and there certainly isn’t a shortage of places to buy guns in America.

EVIDENCE:

“The FBI checks the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) to see if they are a prohibited purchaser. Prohibited purchasers include felons, fugitives, domestic abusers and the dangerously mentally ill. Simply put, the effectiveBrady Law prevents guns from getting into the hands of dangerous people”

“The nation’s gun buying background check system is supposed to keep firearms out of reach for dangerous individuals. But it’s not meant to catch early warning signs like those exhibited by Nikolas Cruz, the man identified as the shooter who allegedly killed 17 at a South Florida high school on Valentine’s Day.”

“the system screens for certain indicators of past violence, misconduct, and mental health issues — but not all. The scope of review is narrow and would not capture all aspects”

Other countries have had sweeping reforms across their nations and with there laws and legislators after single incidents, yet we as Americans have had so many gun related deaths that we are equivalent to third world countries and nations at war, why can’t we follow in the footsteps of our allies, and nations like us?

EVIDENCE:

“When Australia had a mass killing – I think it was in Tasmania – about 25 years ago, it was just so shocking the entire country said: ‘Well, we’re going to completely change our gun laws’. And they did, and it hasn’t happened since,” he said in 2015.”

“Less than two weeks after the Port Arthur massacre, all six Australian states agreed to enact the same sweeping gun laws banning semi-automatic rifles and shotguns – weapons that can kill many people quickly.They also put more hurdles between prospective gun owners and their weapons.

Australia has 28-day waiting periods, thorough background checks, and a requirement to present a “justifiable reason” to own a gun.”

“Other countries all over the world play the same video games and have the same mental health problems as the United States, but manage to avoid a sky-high gun murder rate and frequent public shooting massacres.”

UK: The only firearms that can be owned legally are shotguns, black powder weapons, manually-loaded cartridge pistols and manually-loaded center-fire rifles, all termed “Section 1” firearms.

Canada: “There is no legal right to possess arms in Canada. It takes sixty days to buy a gun there, and there is mandatory licensing for gun owners. Gun owners pursuing a license must have third-party references, take a safety training course and pass a background check with a focus on mental, criminal and addiction histories.”

In 12 weeks we have had 17 school shootings. After 20 kids (children) I mean children lost their lives due to gun violence in school a place that is supposed to be safe there was still nothing done. All this loss, and this hurt and nothing has come of it, how much potential as a nation have we gunned down in our schools before we even had the chance to see where they (the children we lost) could take us.

EVIDENCE:

After Sandy Hook, More Than 400 People Have Been Shot in Over 200 School Shootings

“When a gunman killed 20 first graders and six adults with an assault rifle at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, it rattled Newtown, Conn., and reverberated across the world. Since then, there have been at least 239 school shootings nationwide. In those episodes, 438 people were shot, 138 of whom were killed”

Conclusion:-March for Our Lives will be like the conclusion of the paper?

The march for our lives was a powerful statement to this nations that enough is enough and we simply won’t stand for it anymore and it’s time the government listen to the people. Public opinion in the U.S. has held weight with legislators in the past.

The rallies included hundreds of thousands of protesters and speeches from activists and survivors of shootings, including survivors of the Parkland, Fla. shooting David Hogg and Emma González.

“We are going to make this the voting issue. We are going to take this to every election, to every state and every city. When politicians send their thoughts and prayers with no action, we say, ‘No more.’ And to those politicians supported by the NRA, that allow the continued slaughter of our children and our future, I say get your resumes ready,” Hogg said.

Too many people have died. Too many have lost their lives to guns. Too many children, brothers, sisters, cousins, and friends have died because of people with guns. There hasn’t been any change despite all of this loss. Despite everything that has happened in this nation there hasn’t been progress, or laws enacted. People are demanding change. The March for Our Lives had millions of people all around the world, demanding action.

I went to the deliberation entitled If You Can’t See it Are They Really Sick? The Social Stigma Around Mental Health. I chose to go this discussion because it offered me another opportunity to look at mental health but this time through a different lens, through one that was working to combat mental health stigma in the workplace since that would affect us all in the future since we will all soon join the workforce. I really wanted to go this deliberation because I wanted to see if the ideas that were brought up in this discussion were ones that could be applied to also helping the stigma surrounding mental health on campus.

In this discussion, the focus was on how to help and create a better environment in the workplace so that we can prevent and stop this growing problem plaguing corporate America. This was the main idea that we analyzed during the deliberation.

The main discussion that I participated in and found to be the most engaging was the one discussing the idea of having sick days to being renamed to encompass sick days for physical illness but also mental illness so that there would be less discrimination. I really supported this idea and thought it would work well, businesses already have these built in sick days, to begin with so allowing them for mental health only seems to reasonable especially when you consider the idea that was brought up in my deliberation about how “mental health issues are just as serious as physical issues; there should be no difference in empathy.” I think this really applies to mental health in the workplace as well and I think it is really important to draw conclusions and make connections between the steps being taken on campus and at the corporate level for getting rid of the stigma surrounding mental health.

The one article I read from psychology today was about mental health and the stigma around it. The article first defines and also divides it into two parts “What is mental health stigma?: Mental health stigma can be divided into two distinct types: social stigma is characterized by prejudicial attitudes and discriminating behavior directed towards individuals with mental health problems as a result of the psychiatric label they have been given. In contrast, perceived stigma or self-stigma is the internalizing by the mental health sufferer of their perceptions of discrimination, and perceived stigma can significantly affect feelings of shame and lead to poorer treatment outcomes” besides these helpful definitions the article goes on to discuss what the common stigmatizing attitude are in society. Essentially the whole article discusses the different aspects of stigma and since our approach is about helping get rid of the stigma surrounding mental health on campus and in the community this is a great article we can use to help explain why is important to eliminate this and just overall be educated on the topic

The next article I looked at was about this nationwide stigma-free campaign that County College Morris is heading and working on, and I think that this article was a useful one to look at because it’s relevant to college campus and community towns, and I think it’s a good example of how lots of college campuses across America are working toward campuses that have no mental health stigma and provide the care and support the students need. We can use this article in our deliberation as evidence as to why Penn State should get involved in helping end the stigma towards mental health, the article also specifically targets initiatives that colleges can take to create stigma-free environments.

Cite it:

County College of Morris. “Stigma-Free Community Initiative .” Www.morriscountystigmafree.org, County College of Morris, 2008.

In our deliberation, we will be discussing how to improve mental health and mental wellness in general on campus. We will be looking at three approaches to help the alleviate the main problems that we feel face the university and the surrounding area with regards to this issue.

Approach 1: We are going to focus on CAPS. We want to specifically focus on how to fix the problem of advertising CAPS to students, making it more accessible and then also making it more efficient for students. We have multiple ways in which we want to do this one way we were thinking is to advertise it more to students, and then to help make it more efficient and we feel that by helping improve CAPS it will, in turn, help the surrounding community as well.

Approach 2: We are going to focus on how to prevent the stigma associated with mental health and then also how to create an accepting environment at the university and in the surrounding community. Some ways we want to do this is through education because that is where all this starts, so we were thinking of having speakers come who have been affected by mental health coming to talk to the university as well as the community would be good. Also along with this want to have a storytelling for people to speak about their experience with mental health. We also want to spread awareness so some things other universities have done is to visualize the impact mental health has on students and they have done this in public places to show the scope and number of people that are affected by it so that people will understand and see that this is a large issue. We feel that through education and awareness we can help get rid of the stigma that is surrounded by mental health and also create an accepting environment.

Approach 3: We want to emphasize the general education of mental health at the university. In order to do this, our main idea is to have a class on mental health that students take to that they are then educated on it. Another way we want to promote and have the general education is through having clubs and organizations that also focus on mental health.

My role is I am one of the people responsible for moderating, introducing, and closing the discussion on approach two.

Currently, I am working on research for approach two as well how we want to present this information and what we actually hope to discuss. Right now we are just in the beginning stages of working through this approach and I am really just focusing on becoming an expert on it.

This is something I hear all the time when people ask me about who my best friend is. They really don’t get it they seem to think that just because we don’t live next to each other and see each other everyday that means we can’t be best friends. Now I might have a lot of really good friends but my very best friend in the whole world is Rosie and yeah she really does live in Ireland, and yeah despite literally having an ocean between us we are still best friends. Whenever I have this conversation about who my best friend is with people I’m reminded of the day Rosie told me she was moving. Rosie and I were playing in the woods behind her house, climbing our favorite tree, daring each other to go higher and higher. When we finally decide we’d climbed high enough Rosie turns to me and says “I’m moving to Canada but it’s only for a year” I look at her blankly trying to process, after a long pause I say “But a year, that’s like forever what am I going to do without you?” She just smiles at me and says “Don’t worry we’ll write to each other all the time, and I’ll be back before you know it.” That conversation is something I will never forget because the feeling I had, the thought of not having her by my side was daunting I wondered how’d we make it. Little did we know that this was just the beginning. That summer when Rosie was staying with me for a couple weeks she told me even more heartbreaking news she wasn’t coming back to Connecticut. She was moving to Ireland for 3 years. I remember thinking how are we supposed to be a whole ocean apart when it was hard enough just being 9 hours apart? But I still had hope because she said three years and then she’d be back. I could handle three years. But three years turned into forever, Rosie never moved back to the U.S. She’s is still over in Europe and I’m still here in the U.S. We see each other every summer and it’s always a different adventure. Sometimes it’s here in the States other times it’s over in Europe but it honestly doesn’t matter where we are because wherever it is I’m always just happy to have my best friend by my side even if it’s only for a week or two. Sometimes it’s really hard to not have my best friend by my side and I miss her like crazy all the time, and I wonder why do we do this? But the thing is everytime I see her I’m reminded why we’re best friends. We’re best friends because despite all the distance and time spent apart we always just pick up where we left off like we never spent any time apart because she’s my person and I’m hers. Friendship is about the memories you’ve made and the ones you want to make in the future, it’s about wanting that person in your life no matter what. It’s the person who will support you even through all your bad decisions, and your good decisions it’s the person you’ll call to bail you out of jail if you ever need it, it’s the person who will stick by you through anything, it’s the person who knows everything about you it’s the person who will be your maid of honor, it’s the person you’ll name your kid after and for me that’s Rosie. She’s my person. So this I believe, friendship can’t be broken because of distance because friendship is much more powerful than that. I believe in the power of friendship to last a lifetime.

I want to also focus on the outcome the here and now of women fighting for their place in the workplace and what that means for my generation

Possible Attention Strategies:

Quote “It’s time to stop fooling ourselves, says a woman who left a position of power: the women who have managed to be both mothers and top professionals are superhuman, rich, or self-employed. If we truly believe in equal opportunity for all women, here’s what has to change.” (The Atlantic)

Video: show jellybean video of how many minutes in life

Question: How many of you believe that you can have it all the family, the career everything? Well guess what you only have 24 hours in a day so how are you going to spend it?

Personal story: about why I want to become a lawyer and why I have these dreams what they mean to me what I want to achieve…

Main Idea: Women in the legal profession hold tremendous power to enact and make change happen I believe that the change starts with them.

Influential Lawyers in the Past

Marcia Greenberger

“I had this feeling that many of the guys in my class assumed that there was something weird about the women who went to law school, and we had to demonstrate that we were regular human beings,”

Judith Lichtman

“When I began working in the summer of 1974, I increased the number of paid lawyers working on women’s legal rights in D.C. by one-third”

Marna Tucker

:female law students had to work harder and put up with a lot.”

“We were made of a little sturdier stuff than the average male law student,” she added. “We knew we were jumping into something that was not going to be easy for us.”

Main Idea 2: What Women Need to change to have it all

“I was increasingly aware that the feminist beliefs on which I had built my entire career were shifting under my feet.”

Women have been relying on this notion in the 21st century that they can have it all when really in society they can’t

The way society is now we can’t have it all

“I’d been part, albeit unwittingly, of making millions of women feel that they are to blame if they cannot manage to rise up the ladder as fast as men and also have a family and an active home life” (The Atlantic)

Main Idea 3: Now we have a place in the workforce and the glass ceilings might not all be shattered but they are all breaking that is the what my generation has to do we have to break the glass ceiling

HOW?

-Each other

-learn from our history

-we fight to have it all

I believe that the journey ahead of us is long and hard, I believe that is will be hard but I believe that it will happen I believe that someday we will live in a world where women can have it all and maybe I’m just an optimist but I believe that anything is possible with hard work and dedication

Thesis: There has been a shift in the past decade women believe that they are deserving, and have the right to the same positions in the workforce as men because of this push to get women involved in the STEM, to get women involved in the workforce and into those leadership positions these are all the steps to shatter the glass ceiling.

This information sets up women’s role in stem fields now

I feel like the shift started to really come to the light as important with the NASA hidden figures, I think that this is what signified to a lot of people that there not only has been a shift but that it is here to stay like this that women now have and will continue to have an important role in the workforce particularly in the STEM fields.

Shifts I want to Talk About:

-Began with Take Your Daughter to Workday

-Women entering the workforce in the past decade

-Women in Stem

-Hidden Figures

Paragraph Topic:

Why Science is Important to the Future

“these young scientists and engineers teach us something beyond the specific topics that they’re exploring. They teach us how to question assumptions; to wonder why something is the way it is, and how we can make it better. And they remind us that there’s always something more to learn, and to try, and to discover, and to imagine — and that it’s never too early, or too late to create or discover something new.

That’s why we love science. It’s more than a school subject, or the periodic table, or the properties of waves. It is an approach to the world, a critical way to understand and explore and engage with the world, and then have the capacity to change that world, and to share this accumulated knowledge. It’s a mindset that says we that can use reason and logic and honest inquiry to reach new conclusions and solve big problems. And that’s what we are celebrating here today with these amazing young people.”

Getting Girls Involved in Stem

Evidence:

“As a country, we stand to gain a lot by exposing young girls to STEM fields and encouraging those who are interested to follow their hearts and minds. Simply focusing attention on one age group cannot cure all societal issues that influence career choices among females. Correcting the negative perceptions that girls develop at a young age can, however, lead them to embrace math and science when they reach high school, rather than avoid the subjects. Administrators and educators must strive to create environments in high school and college math and science programs that are inviting to females if we want to prevent the likelihood of their choosing a different direction. As long as young boys and girls are exposed to science and technology and are equally encouraged to study those disciplines, those with talent and a genuine interest in those fields will be able to develop that interest. Science and technology are and will continue to be important factors in what we are able to accomplish in our lifetimes.”

This story was updated on January 21, 2015, to include a video of the author addressing the Rosalind Franklin Society, a women’s leadership group, about the experience of reporting and writing this story.

James Gross, a psychology professor at Stanford University, has a 13-year-old daughter who loves math and science. It hasn’t occurred to her yet that that’s unusual, he says. “But I know in the next couple of years, it will.”

“I know as time goes on, she’ll feel increasingly lonely as a girl who’s interested in math and science”—and be at risk of narrowing her choices in life before finding out how far she could have gone.

Women now make up half the national workforce, earn more college and graduate degrees than men, and by some estimates represent the largest single economic force in the world. Yet the gender gap in science persists, to a greater degree than in other professions, particularly in high-end, math-intensive fields such as computer science and engineering.

According to U.S. Census Bureau statistics, women in fields commonly referred to as STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) made up 7 percent of that workforce in 1970, a figure that had jumped to 23 percent by 1990. But the rise essentially stopped there. Two decades later, in 2011, women made up 26 percent of the science workforce.

It’s not that women aren’t wanted. “I don’t know any institution today that is not trying to hire more women scientists and engineers,” says one science historian. But many cultural forces continue to stand in the way—ranging from girls being steered toward other professions from an early age and gender bias and sexual harassment in the workplace to the potentially career-stalling effects on women of having children.

“Where did the idea for Take Our Daughters to Work Day come from?

WILSON: [It came from]Carol Gilligan’s research looking at how adolescent girls started to lose their sense of who they were — thinking, talking and saying what they felt. You weren’t supposed to question boys. You weren’t supposed to know anything, so to speak.

[The Ms. Foundation] hired a great consultant, Nell Merlino, who told us a story that she had heard about a girl who was at a school that made arrangements for her to have an internship at a wonderful place in downtown New York. The girl went to the building, and she couldn’t go in. She was really intimidated, and she went home. They sent her a second time, and she got there, got a little further [inside the building], but she just couldn’t [go upstairs]. Finally, the person who had been working with her at the school just came with her and took her up to see the woman, and she got a great internship and lived happily ever after. Gilligan knew that it was important for women’s voices to support girls in keeping their sense of self in adolescence.”

The two images that really stood out to me are 1) the photo on page 223, of the U.S. soldiers carrying the body of their fallen comrade. This photo sticks out to me because of the emotion it carries and the weight literal and emotional that the photo depicts. The photo shows the weight that the soldiers are carrying and will carry and that emotion is what really sticks out to me. The second image that really stood out to me was the one on page 226 of all the kids and refugees reaching for food and water. Once again the emotion behind all their faces, the agony, hunger, thirst is written all over their faces. We can feel their pain and that is powerful, that is what the photo does for me it allows me to feel the emotion of the people in the photo. Photography is a powerful tool used by journalists.

I can incorporate blogs and videos into my blog to make the horse life come alive for people to really show them what it is like to live breath and just be a part of the horse world. I was thinking of doing my next blog about a day in life of an equestrian at a horse show, I was going to go through my day from start to finish to show the horse show side of things and the competition and what it is like. I also think this will help break down the ideology that equestrian is for the elite, I think showing people what it is like working and also riding in a show on the same day will be not only a good blog but interesting for readers to read. I think that by including photos and videos from horse shows it makes it more personal and really allows people to feel the emotions I feel while I am there which will in turn give them a better understanding of the equestrian world.

Following the election of Donald Trump women took to social media and created an event that would later be the 2017 Women’s March. Women took to facebook and all other forms of social media in order calling people to march and protest to show solidarity for women, minorities, immigrants, and everyone that was marginalized and hurt by the rhetoric of Trump’s campaign. They called for people to take action, same as the phrase nasty women did after the third and final debate. People were being called to action, called to fight for their rights by their fellow citizens. People gathered and participated in what would become the largest peaceful demonstration in history, we made history on January 17, 2017. But how did we make history? We made history because we had a cause that people rallied behind they rallied behind it because fighting for what’s right is worth it. The same ideology that is behind the phrase nasty women was behind the women’s march and another way in which people showed their support and protest was through fashion. Fashion as protest was not a new way in which people expressed their opinions. During the women’s suffrage movement women wore uniforms to show that they were in unity and could join the workforce, during slutwalks people wore what was deemed to be slutty to prove the point that women are not asking to be raped, and then the women’s march used the pussy hats to show solidarity and convey a message to the new administration. Movements throughout history have used fashion as protest to show administrations what they want for the future of America and what they believe. Now we will hear from one of the women’s march coordinators Tamika Mallory and her thoughts on this idea of women using fashion as protest

Interviewer: Hello Tamika how are you today?

Tamika: I’m doing well, I’m excited to discuss the worldwide protest that occurred on behalf of women’s rights, immigration reform, healthcare reform, reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, racial equality and equality in general. While the marches that occurred on January 21st were a part of the larger protests of the current U.S. president Donald Trump, the Women’s March that took place this year made history as the largest protest in history, and I can’t wait to share my insight and thoughts on the use of fashion as protest and how that worked to get the message about they type of America we (the citizens) want to live in.

Interviewer: So what was the main form of fashion that protestors used during the women’s march?

Tamika: The pussy hats were definitely the most widely used was the pussy hat which were being bought and made by women and protesters everywhere it was really a sight to see all those pussy hats marching down the street in solidarity unified under one cause.

Interviewer: Yes it certainly was the images taken of the women’s march were certainly powerful! So what was the purpose of the pussy hats and using fashion as protest?

Tamika: Well I think that our original intent of the pussy hat has grown at first it was only meant to be a symbol of solidarity but it has since evolved to become a symbol for an ideology. An ideology that women are equal to men, that the future is female, that women can break the glass ceiling, the hat come to represent so much more than a play on the insult that Donald Trump said to women everywhere (grab em by the pussy). The hat has come to be a symbol of hope and the values that people were marching for. The pussy hat began to symbolize each and everyone of the ideologies and commonplaces that the protesters gathered to raise their voices about.

Interviewer: The Pussy hat certainly has grown into something more than simply a symbol of solidarity it has even become a project and group known as the pussy hat project. What are your thoughts on that.

Tamika: Quite simply the organization is taking the hat and creating meaning behind it quite simply the purpose of the pussy hat is about women refusing to be erased from political discussion they are using the hats as a way to keep the conversation going about women’s rights they are using the hat to make sure people don’t forget and move on before real change occurs or can occur.

Interviewer: So is there a mission of the pussy hat? Can fashion have a mission? Can fashion have an impact? I think a lot of our readers are wondering this, how can fashion have such a large impact on protest.

Tamika: Well to answer these questions the pussy hat is the perfect example because the pussy hat truly shows how fashion can have an impact on the protest, the ideologies of the people and help unify people. The pussy hat was created as a symbol for women marchers to wear to the women’s march so that they could be unified by a single symbol a single image, because that is the legacy and power of protests the images and ideas that stick with and follow people around in their daily lives reminding them of the ideologies that are being fought for and the commonplaces that are being established. The pussy hat was created under the american commonplace that everyone can participate, it’s original intention was so that people who could not come out to the march could still be a part of the movement and still perform their civic duty and be a part of democracy.

Interviewer: What message did the Pussy hat send to the new administration?

Tamika: I feel that the pussy hat helped send the message that we as American’s will not bow down and give up our rights that we will fight, that we have the right to fight and that you can’t take that away from us just as the new administration cannot take our rights away because we do live in a democracy. I feel like the pussy hat helped remind people of that and was also a way in which they could stick one to the administration.

Analyze the pussy hat as means for performing our civic duty reference Hillary Clinton’s speech because it was all in response to a call to action I feel like I could maybe do a second interview here going into more depth about how the pussy hat is working within the social and historical context to remind people and help them do their civic duty and participate in democracy.

Conclusion: Overall how fashion as protest has been used historically and in modern times as an agent to enact change, bring people together, and help a movement be more effective. I want to use the pussy hat as my main artifact because I feel like that one is the fashion that has the most meaning to the women’s march and that is the context that I was planning on focusing on I feel like this will wrap up the magazine article nicely.